What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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BareKnuckleRoo
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

http://lizardnes.com/

This game is strange and wonderful.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Ajora »

Undertale is probably my favorite game of this decade. It's truly brilliant and heartwarming.

I upgraded my computer recently and figured Doom 2016 would be the best place for me to start. Of all the things I was expecting from Doom 2016, I don't think I ever expected the writing, lore, humor, and characters to be as good as they are. The game is also more difficult than I expected, which is a good thing. The game is precisely as challenging as it should be on Ultra-Violence. I'm extremely impressed.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Xyga »

While I was testing stuff with the OSSC the other day, I let myself play a little of the original Tales of Phantasia which I hadn't touched in ages, and ended up playing way further than planned.

Having played the PS1 remake much more than that one it was funny how I ended up trying stuff and looking for things that actually aren't in that version of the game.

And experiencing what hurts also, like the irritating uselessly high encounter rate (even using holy bottles) which makes you waste time and earn too much money.
The controls are also too limited in places which makes some battles a chore. Can dude even target? And stop running any?
Some attacks are useless.
Certain spells and summons are better turned off and some which would be useful are never used (a Tales Of trademark tho)
Your characters AI really weak and working against you sometimes.
The food part being somewhat occult and you wonder if it even works.
The so-so translation.
etc

Yet, there's still a lot to like about it, you can find okay workarounds for the issues and appreciate the obvious insane amount of work and love the devs put in that game.

Some aspects oddly are better than in the remake, like while the easy money should be a gamebreaker, there are segments of the game where you're kept permanently in danger of being wiped out by certain enemies even if you have the best equipment and good level, which brings some tense oh shit moments here and there to keep you awaken. Still a walk in the park of course but IIRC that doesn't exist anymore in the remake which is rebalanced but totally lacks such bumps.
Also this is of course a matter of taste, but I find the art and consistency of the world, the ambiance better overall.
You even see scenes like the sky assault part looking technically better than in the PS1 remake.

I love wasting time like this instead of playing other more interesting games I've started like on the PS4 which is accumulating dust. ^^"
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MommysBestGames
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by MommysBestGames »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:http://lizardnes.com/

This game is strange and wonderful.
Hmm.. I checked out the video. It looks intriguing and confusing!


As for me, I finally beat Butcher on PS4, on Hard mode (the default :).
Holy crap, that was fun. Dual-stick shooter, lots of blood, lots of fast shooting.
I found the game tough, but fair and still doable.
I honestly thought it would be too difficult, but other than the final boss, it was a pretty good balance.
I died plenty, but the levels are pretty short, and there's some nice strategies to discover in each level.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by system11 »

Blasphemous is driving me crazy at the moment, some very difficult areas boss fights and lots to work out without many clues.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by FinalBaton »

Not just a game per se, but more of a genre.

I find myself really enjoying short action-RPGs and action adevnture games lately. Like something that can be finished in a day or two(especially in a single day/single sitting)

Replayed Faxanadu 2 weeks ago and that was a really enjoyable half-a-day. Then replayed Mega Man 3 last week and again, that was a really, really fun couple hours (now I know you'll probably say "what? Mega Man lumped with adventure games? what are you talking about?". But personally I see Mega Man more as an action-adventure game, than a pure action title. What with these weapons you obtain permanently and the game structure also). I'll rebuy MM 2 and 4 for sure, I really had a damn good time with 3 (I remember liking all of 1-4 when I was a kid. 5 I've played over my best friend's I think? but can't remember much.). Anyway, that series really click with me nowadays, I'm in the right headspace to enjoy them.

I plan to get a copy of ActRaiser 2, as that game really left a mark on me back then, and I can't wait to see for myself how the controls hold up. I've seen many big Youtubers(whom I don't trust much) blaming the controls, but our very own Vanguard was having none of it, so that makes me hopeful.

I also want to play Cadash but I'll wait till I get a PC Engine to play it on there I think. Seems to be a nicer version than on the Mega Drive. Same with Exile.




Separate from this trend, I ordered a cheap in box copy of Illusion of Gaia(kinda on a Quintet binge), but I don't know if I'll be playing it soon, since I'm in the mood described above to play short single-sitting games. Might push it back to later. I did play some Phantasy Star 2 yesterday, but I gotta digest that one small portions at a time. I can't do 2 elaborate maze-dungeons in the same sitting. So I gotta do one, then stop playing for a day or two, and then go back and do another one. gotta take it in small bites with that game
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by it290 »

I prefer Cadash on the Genesis if only for the fact that you can continue (although I suppose there's a cheat for this-which I never realized-so not really a valid point I guess heh). It's not a terribly difficult game to clear on one credit but it requires some grinding that's minimized if you're not worried about the 1cc. I find the Genesis version a little nicer visually as well. Shame about the cut characters and boss though, that always pissed me off as a kid.
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FinalBaton
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by FinalBaton »

it290 wrote:I prefer Cadash on the Genesis if only for the fact that you can continue (although I suppose there's a cheat for this-which I never realized-so not really a valid point I guess heh). It's not a terribly difficult game to clear on one credit but it requires some grinding that's minimized if you're not worried about the 1cc. I find the Genesis version a little nicer visually as well. Shame about the cut characters and boss though, that always pissed me off as a kid.
Interesting! I didn't know some people preferred the Genesis version. I thought it was an unanimous call in favour of the PC Engine version. I may look into it now...
Thanks for the breakdown and mention of the caveats, I'll consider those in my choice
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Ruldra »

Still playing Dominions 4 online. Game is basically fantasy-themed Risk.

First match, I choose Ermor, a Rome-themed nation. At this point I have no idea how to use magic so my only tactic in battle is to send hordes of legionnaires hoping they can do the job. That didn't go well when air-winged humans from Caelum attacked me. Proficient in Air magic, they cast a spell to summon a great rainstorm in battle and then shower my troops with thunderstrikes. As if that wasn't enough, they can also recruit mammoths that can simply trample my soldiers. There wasn't much I could do to counter that and they overrun my empire and storm my capital. As a final fuck you to Caelum, I summon a massive storm of fire that burns everyone on the battlefield. It wasn't enough to stop them but at least I took many of their troops with me. After that, I surrended.

Second match is going well so far. This time I'm playing as Tien Chi, a chinese-themed nation. Main army is composed of lightly protected but very nimble, dual-wielding sword warriors and elementalist mages. My prophet bless my troops with the equivalent of a Haste spell from Dungeons & Dragons, making my 70 or so warriors even more difficult to hit and deadly in combat. Meanwhile the mages cast a spell that opens the ground and swallow the legs of enemy troops, leaving them helpless, which then my warriors proceed to finish them off. Also have very old master mages who can fly and summon demons at my disposal; these guys can simply fly over heavily-contested provinces and raid deep into enemy territory. Currently at war against amazon-themed Sauromatia, while demons from Lanka closely watch my progress and secretly offers advice and gold to Sauromatia to stop my advance. Lanka player is the same who played Caelum in the previous game so I have a grudge against him. After I'm done with Sauromatia I plan to attack Lanka next, and also ask for help from currently allied nation of bat people. Their units are individually weak but attack en masse, they are very annoying to deal with. All diplomacy is run via Discord, by the way.

This game is very fun and very very deep, so many viable strategies are available. And nations are completely different from each other. Whoever likes strategy games should definitely check it out.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Vanguard »

FinalBaton wrote:Interesting! I didn't know some people preferred the Genesis version. I thought it was an unanimous call in favour of the PC Engine version. I may look into it now...
Thanks for the breakdown and mention of the caveats, I'll consider those in my choice
The arcade version stomps both ports.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by FinalBaton »

Vanguard wrote:
FinalBaton wrote:Interesting! I didn't know some people preferred the Genesis version. I thought it was an unanimous call in favour of the PC Engine version. I may look into it now...
Thanks for the breakdown and mention of the caveats, I'll consider those in my choice
The arcade version stomps both ports.
good to know. There are games like that, where the arcade is just sooooo much better than ports, that it's better to just bother with arcade honestly. Alien Syndrome is such a game.


Heyyyy wait a minute : I'm watching a playthrough of Exile on PC ENgine CD and : is that a Kraftwerk sample I hear? :D (the german voice counting numbers on Computer World album) Did WOrking Designs add that in there? or was it in the original release?

https://youtu.be/LzUglvoadyM?t=2938
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by it290 »

Playing through Disco Elysium at the moment. Have to admit, it was quite a kick to hear the voices of the Chapo guys in the game since I hadn't heard about them being in there. Pretty stellar game from a writing perspective, definitely lives up to the hype. If I had to gripe at all, I'd say that it sometimes feels pretty arbitrary which skills will be useful for a given encounter, and as a result the 'RPGness' of the game from a stats perspective feels almost unnecessary-it could have just as easily been a point and click adventure game, although your ability to build affinities (and converse with) different aspects of your personality does add for some great narrative touches. I'll be looking forward to a second playthrough of this one with a more physically-focused character (went with Empathy main and Intellect secondary for the first go).
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Marc »

Reaching the end of REmake 2. Got to the bit in the lab where you round a corner and it decides to throw a couple of lickers in front and a crowd of zombs from behind, with literally no warning whatsoever, and turned the thing off. In fairness, my playthough has been far too piecemeal to get into it properly, it's taken almost three months! I'll prob replay with Claire over a couple of nights.

Pix the Cat is awesome, picked it up on sale for Switch and love it. A Pac Man CE / Flicky mashup that rapisly becomes stupidly addictive.

Rolling Thunder on Switch, I intend to finally put in some proper time and 1CC this. I'm not as sold on the sequel, it feels more.... loose I guess? I can understand why some may prefer it, but there's a very rigid feel the the originals mechanics that I personally enjoy. Still not convinced by Splatterhouse, a game I've always wanted to like far more than I actually do.

And Pac Man CEDX 2 sucks compared the masterpiece original.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Marc wrote:And Pac Man CEDX 2 sucks compared the masterpiece original.
I'm not personally huge into Pac-Man but a friend who happens to be rather high up on the Pac-Man CE leaderboards has the same opinion as you, that the sequel just isn't as good as CE was.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Marc »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:
Marc wrote:And Pac Man CEDX 2 sucks compared the masterpiece original.
I'm not personally huge into Pac-Man but a friend who happens to be rather high up on the Pac-Man CE leaderboards has the same opinion as you, that the sequel just isn't as good as CE was.
Honestly, I'm not a massive fan of Pac-Man and clones either, but CE DX is damn-near perfect, everyone should give it a go. Sequel just added too many ideas and the entire thing feels really disjointed to play now. Damn shame.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Mortificator »

I think original Championship Edition was near the series' top and DX was already ruining the fundamentals. Pac-Man's at its best when it's fast-paced cat & mouse against enemies with varied behavior and instant lethality. DX goes into slow motion when ghosts are near, as if to ask "are you sure you'd like to die?", AND lets you bomb them back to their box at the touch of a button. Most enemies have no individual weight and are just there to chugga chugga on the ghost train. Eating trains is practically a cutscene (no surprise that CE2 makes it actually a cutscene).
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by guigui »

I would like to try those modern Pacman games, but now I'm confused with the names. Here are the games I seem to find, could you precise which one(s) is(are) the good one(s) :

* Pacman Championship Edition
* Pacman Championship Edition 2
* Pacman Championship Edition DX
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Marc
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Marc »

guigui wrote:I would like to try those modern Pacman games, but now I'm confused with the names. Here are the games I seem to find, could you precise which one(s) is(are) the good one(s) :

* Pacman Championship Edition
* Pacman Championship Edition 2
* Pacman Championship Edition DX
As far as I'm aware, you have (in order)

Pacman CE
Pacman CE DX (sometimes named CE DX+)
Pacman CE DX 2

The original CE is quite literally, updated Pac Man, with ghost combos and more speed. The sequel adds new elements such as 'ghost trains' and plays a bit less like traditional Pacman, but for me remains the perfect balance of old and new. CE DX 2 has far too much stuff and means far less instinctive to play, it's still fun, but not in the slightly obsessive way CE DX was. The first two are different enough to be worth picking up both if you have the means.

I'm very jealous of someone getting to play either of them for the first time, enjoy!
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by guigui »

Thanks for clarifying this for me Marc.

Though now I see that the Switch only has CE DX 2, which I now remember trying on the PS4 and found that indeed too much stuff were going on, could not stick with it.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

Glad to hear people favoring the original CE.

I was never a fan of the original classic Pac-Man, but CE fixed basically all the issues I had with the game, and I had a lot of fun playing it, mostly casually.

Come DX the ghost train thing felt kinda weird to me. I figured it was some puzzle-like advanced strategy that can be optimized for score play, that I just didn't get fully. But I totally subscribe to the idea of it feeling like a cutscene of sorts.
I absolutely prefer the simplicity of the first CE, but don't consider myself anywhere near an authority on the subject. :P
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Marc »

Sumez wrote:Glad to hear people favoring the original CE.

I was never a fan of the original classic Pac-Man, but CE fixed basically all the issues I had with the game, and I had a lot of fun playing it, mostly casually.

Come DX the ghost train thing felt kinda weird to me. I figured it was some puzzle-like advanced strategy that can be optimized for score play, that I just didn't get fully. But I totally subscribe to the idea of it feeling like a cutscene of sorts.
I absolutely prefer the simplicity of the first CE, but don't consider myself anywhere near an authority on the subject. :P
The ghost trains in DX were synched to the ideal path through each maze, so essentially once you'd gotten down the order the pill patterns appeared in, a perfect board was literally one side to the other faster and faster without ever deviating from the optimal path as the trains would always be pretty much en route. Of course, the moment you screwed up in any way, it got harder to recover and blew your score. It's obsessive pattern learning and really isn't my thing usually, but for some reason it just clicked and I put enough time in to 100% it and loiter around the top of certain leaderboards for a while.

The sequel just throws in too many different ideas and mucks it up completely. It's fun enough to play through the mission mode, but nowhere near as satisfying for score play.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

It's obsessive pattern learning and really isn't my thing usually
That's exactly the thing I didn't like about the original 1980 Pac-Man XD
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Udderdude »

I want an update of Pac & Pal. Or Super Pac-Man. lol
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

Pac-Man II: The New Adventures
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Pac Man Arrangement is really fun, though. It came on a compilation board that includes Dig Dug Arrangement (also fun and 2 player coop), and Rally-X Arrangement (ew) along with the original games.

It's more of a casual experience with multiple ways to capture ghosts, a bit of RNG on items, 2 player coop (which makes it a great deal easier, I've 1CC'd it cooperatively with friends). It's not super serious for score attacking like CE is, but it's fun to have for the vertical cab for people not into shmups.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by drauch »

Sumez wrote:Pac-Man II: The New Adventures
Now we're talkin'! I had a weird relationship with that one, renting it when It came out and being completely disgusted, yet intrigued in its absurdity. Then I rented it again and had the same experience, which I think led to ultimately buying it. He's just such a little shit in it with a major 'tude that appeals to my masochistic hateful playing of such a game. I feel like I will never rest until I beat it. Maybe 2020 is the Year of the Pac.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

It's such a truly bizarre game. I'm not sure if it's brilliant and weird, or horrible and awful.

At least it has an unlockable version of an actual Pac-Man game in it.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BrianC »

I had the same feeling towards the game when I rented it. I ended up getting the Genesis version at a yard sale. Odd thing is that the Ms. Pac-Man in that port was changed into Pac-Jr. (not to be confused with Jr. Pac-Man) with alterations to the level design. I was disappointed that it wasn't the real Jr. Pac-Man, though it's still a nice bonus extra.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Mortificator »

Back in the day, it took me a long time to figure out how to get that damn bottle without breaking it. Now, I question the ethics of giving stolen unpasteurized cow's milk straight to a Pac-baby.
BareKnuckleRoo wrote:Pac Man Arrangement is really fun, though. It came on a compilation board that includes Dig Dug Arrangement (also fun and 2 player coop), and Rally-X Arrangement (ew) along with the original games.
Agreed! Pac-Man Arrangement is awesome and I'd put it in the top three Pac-Man games, along with CE and Ms.

One word of warning to anyone interested, though, is that some later compilations have a terrible 3D arrangement of arrangement, so make sure what you're getting.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

First time I played it I had no idea you could make him turn around at will (you have to hold two buttons to do it), so the only way I had to make him go the other direction was to intentionally make shit happen to him, which seriously affected his mood.
That really upped the puzzle factor of the game with like 1000% XD

Also, the MegaDrive version of the cover is dope. I don't recall if the SNES one has the same effect, but I don't think so?
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